US 'very concerned' about swine flu outbreak

Apr 24 08:32 AM US/Eastern

US medical authorities expressed strong concern Friday about an unprecedented multi-strain swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and infected seven people in the United States.
"It's very obvious that we are very concerned. We've stood up emergency operation centers," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.

One major source of concern was that the virus included strains from different types of flu.

"This is the first time that we've seen an avian strain, two swine strains and a human strain," said Daigle, adding that the virus had influenza strains from European and Asian swine, but not from North American swine.

In 11 of 12 reported human cases of swine influenza (H1N1) virus infection in the United States from December 2005 to February 2009, the CDC has documented direct or indirect contact with swine.

But the seven known cases of the previously undetected strain in the United States -- five from California and two from Texas -- did not have contact with pigs. The seven people infected have all recovered from the flu.

"We have determined that this virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human," the CDC said on its website. "However, at this time, we have not determined how easily the virus spreads between people."

Local and state health officials were interviewing not just the people who were infected but the people with whom they had contact, Daigle noted.

Officials were looking for the source of the infection, Daigle said, adding that US health officials were due to receive samples from Mexico that would be tested at a lab at the centers based in Atlanta, Georgia.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified swine influenza as a potential source of a human flu pandemic. Pandemics usually occur every 20 years.

"Our experts and others are saying are not saying it's not a matter of whether but when. And we are past due," said Daigle.

Swine flu is caused by type A influenza and does not normally infect humans but cases have been reported among people, especially those exposed to pigs, the CDC said. Most outbreaks take place during the late fall and winter months.

Swine flu symptoms include fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing. Some people who have contracted the virus have also reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the CDC.

Human outbreaks of H1N1 swine influenza virus were recorded in the United States in 1976 and 1988, when two deaths were reported, and in 1986. In 1988, a pregnant woman died after contact with sick pigs, the WHO said.

In recent years, the global focus for a pandemic has shifted to the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has spread from poultry to humans, especially in Asia.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.424c5b4c93103272a5d7bbabb402fdea.c1&show_article=1
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Jeez can this beautiful country get any nastier?

Sure, I'm still looking for some corraboratation, but it seems some vials have went missing at Ft. Detrick.

That would be the same fun place that our antrax attacks came from.

( I love NeoCons. "Bush policies kept us safe after 9/11, nothing else happened. Like the Anthrax attacks are just a figment of the collective imagination.)

Well our fine doctors and pharmaceutical companies need ways to keep the $$$ rolling in somehow!

The right outbreak and Ta-Da, National Emergency.

Bush put alot of stuff into the pipeline about this very thing, including, allowing Canadian and Mexican troops to be interchangeable with our own.

As long as they don't go out and randomly slaughter pigs till they have better proof, I'm all for viral population control.

Care to explain?

Found the evidence of missing virals from the facility that brought us the anthrax attack inside job.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/22/missing.virus.sample/index.html


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Missing vials of a potentially dangerous virus have prompted an Army investigation into the disappearance from a lab in Maryland.

The Army's Criminal Investigation Command agents have been visiting Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, to investigate the disappearance of the vials. Christopher Grey, spokesman for the command, said this latest investigation has found "no evidence of criminal activity."

The vials contained samples of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, a virus that sickens horses and can be spread to humans by mosquitoes. In 97 percent of cases, humans with the virus suffer flu-like symptoms, but it can be deadly in about 1 out of 100 cases, according to Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. There is an effective vaccine for the disease and there hasn't been an outbreak in the United States since 1971.

The vials had been at the research institute's facility at Fort Detrick, home of the Army's top biological research facility, for more than a decade. The three missing vials were among thousands of vials that were under the control of a senior scientist who retired in 2004. When another Fort Detrick scientist recently inventoried the retired scientist's biological samples, he discovered that the three vials of the virus were missing. The original scientist's records about his vials dated back to the days of paper-and-pen inventories.

During the investigation, the retired scientist and another former Fort Detrick researcher cooperated with investigating agents and, according to Vander Linden, they came back to the facility to help look for the vials.

Vander Linden said the investigators know that several years ago an entire freezer full of biological samples broke down and all the samples had to be safely destroyed. But a complete inventory of what was in the freezer was not done before the samples were destroyed. Vander Linden said there's a "strong possibility" the vials were in that freezer and destroyed, but that isn't known for sure.

This investigation comes two months after all research at the research institute facility at Fort Detrick was halted for a complete computer-based inventory of all disease samples at the fort. That inventory is expected to be complete before summer and may help solve the mystery of the three missing vials, officials said.

The Army investigation is in its final stages and is expected to be closed soon.

yep wonder what is going to happen when they decide an portion of the population has this dreaded flu

i wonder

and i doubt the hamptons will get the outbreak

Tests show 20 people in Mexico have died of the new swine flu strain, and that 48 other deaths were probably due to the same strain. The caseload of those sickened has grown to 1,004 nationwide, Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090425/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/med_swine_flu;_ylt=AquYqxdBKI42oJqVtRXXvGnZn414


just something about the flu that has effected people in Texas and Cali

People move about quickly now.

It takes just one carrier to make hundreds and maybe thousands ill.

Board a plane in Mexico...to NYC...in NYC people disembark to...LA, London, Hong Kong...24 hours later where is the virus?

It's funny and sad to see how out of touch with nature so many people are. (Oh yes I am aware germs can be manipulated bu governments etc.) We are animals...we can intellectualize disease processes and their affects on the population and take all sorts of stands...but...viruses are not political...for the most part they are not slowed by race...they don't care about borders and they have no agenda beyond replicating.

Here's a funny thought...if mankind thought they had a common enemy would they unite to fight it or fight about it?

Umm hahah I think we already have that answer.

mankind does have a common enemy

problem is

the common enemy is..................

mankind itself

First, a thought on your funny question.

Ronald Reagan said, in front of the U.N. "I often wonder how quickly mankind would set aside their petty differences if we were faced with an outside threat."
He was referring to an alien invasion.

Now on to this disturbing factiod.

CDC says too late to contain U.S. flu outbreak 24 Apr 2009 19:31:20 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday it was too late to contain the swine flu outbreak in the United States.

CDC acting director Dr. Richard Besser told reporters in a telephone briefing it was likely too late to try to contain the outbreak, by vaccinating, treating or isolating people.

"There are things that we see that suggest that containment is not very likely," he said.

He said the U.S. cases and Mexican cases are likely the same virus. "So far the genetic elements that we have looked at are the same." But Besser said it was unclear why the virus was causing so many deaths in deaths in Mexico and such mild disease in the United States.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Patricia Zengerle)


http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/24443479.htm

from what I was reading it was not that it was a bunch of strains, but one strain genetically linked to all those strains. They all combined into one

and the people catching it have no contact with swine. it's a people to people contact

most have been in Mexico but few cases in America. Apparantly there are ten cases centered around NYU